“Florence Darrow?”
It was the man who’d taken her form and photograph twenty minutes earlier. Florence heard nothing. She was perched on a hard wooden bench watching an old woman fill out a passport application with a slow, shaky hand. Florence had a sudden urge to snatch the pen from her arthritic fingers and hurl it across the room. Tired old crone, she thought. How was she going to navigate customs and security when she couldn’t even fill out a fucking form? Florence’s body was rigid with unexpected fury. She didn’t even know why she was so angry. Something about the woman’s fragility struck her as offensive.
She forced herself to look away and take several slow, deep breaths. She knew from experience that the rage would pass. She tried to put Simon and Amanda and this old woman she didn’t even know out of her mind.
“Florence Darrow?”
She had to prod herself to call out, “That’s me.”
PART III
21.
They landed in Marrakesh with a violent thud and skidded into an unnerving leftward veer. They had been traveling for more than sixteen hours: New York to Lisbon, Lisbon to Marrakesh. Helen had flown business class while Florence sat in coach.
As the plane taxied toward the terminal, the short Arab man next to Florence turned to her and said, “You see the wind in the trees there?” He leaned across her and pressed a well-manicured finger onto the plastic window. “It’s the chergui. It blows in from the Sahara. It doesn’t usually come this early.”
“What does it do?”
“It brings heat and dust.” He smiled. “And if you ask my grandmother, bad luck.”
The plane stopped some distance from the terminal, and two men wheeled a rickety set of stairs up to the side of it. As soon as Florence disembarked, she felt it—the chergui. It whipped her hair around her face and into her mouth. Its roar was joined by the whir of the plane’s engines winding down. The sudden heat and noise had a disorienting effect on Florence. Helen, on the other hand, seemed invigorated by the hot, violent gusts. Her eyes glowed, and she smiled wildly at Florence.
“Bonjour, l’aventure!” she called into the wind.
On the tarmac, two men in fatigues and green berets cradled automatic weapons and followed the line of passengers with bored eyes. There were two terminals. On the right, an old, pink two-story building with a rickety sign spelling out AEROPORT MARRAKECH MENARA in both French and Arabic. Next to it stood a gleaming new construction, a swoop of shiny white plastic like an Ikea table, with a punched-brass facade.
They were ushered into the second building, where the kaleidoscopic carpets and shiny surfaces could have belonged to any conference center in middle America. Florence was disappointed. She had expected something more exotic.
Florence had never been in public with Helen before they’d arrived at JFK. There, the impatience and occasional severity Florence had grown used to in Helen’s temperament manifested itself for the first time physically. She’d scattered crowds like buckshot while Florence tagged behind, trying not to trot. This aggressive efficiency was, in truth, a relief to Florence. She felt herself settle into the role of Helen’s ward. For the time being, she would take a respite from responsibility. She kept her focus on Helen’s back and blocked out everything else.
In Marrakesh, Helen once again charged to the front of the herd of passengers shuffling from their flight. But in the large customs hall they encountered a snaking line containing hundreds of people. It bulged here and there with families and tour groups, as if the snake were digesting several mice whole. Helen stopped short when she saw the crowd, then changed course and made a beeline for a woman in uniform.
“I’m pregnant,” she said to her in English with no elaboration. The woman shot a split-second glance at Helen’s flat stomach, then said, “Of course.” She led them to a shorter line of six or seven people surrounded by strollers and wheelchairs and crutches. Florence shot a glance back at the people who would be waiting an hour, maybe two, in the longer line. She was glad she wasn’t among them. She no longer wanted to be hampered by a petty obsession with rules. Something about it seemed vaguely low-class and pathetic to her now.
Florence had hired a driver through the hotel, and they found him outside of baggage claim holding a sign that said WILCOCK. He wore a long dust-colored tunic over black jeans and Reeboks. He introduced himself as Hamza before guiding them outside toward a late-model Fiat in the parking lot. Again, Florence was disappointed. Though, really, what had she expected—a camel?
They cruised down smooth modern roads, past floodlit billboards—many in English—and around orderly traffic circles planted with neatly groomed flower beds. They passed large, gaudy buildings with neon signs and elaborate fountains. It looked like Las Vegas.
Finally, they approached the ramparts surrounding the medina—the old city—and the Marrakesh of guidebooks appeared before them. The walls, Hamza told them, had been built in the twelfth century. The clay was a warm ochre color that glowed in the afternoon sun. The wall itself was pockmarked with huge holes, some of them jammed with wooden struts. Marrakesh, Florence had read, was known as the Red City, because its buildings had originally been constructed out of reddish clay from the surrounding plains; later, the government required newer structures to be painted the same color.
They drove through Bab El Jdid, one of the busiest gates leading into the medina, and above them rose the towering minaret of the Koutoubia mosque, carved with impossibly intricate fretwork. Topped by four gilded spheres, one on top of the other, it was visible from everywhere else in the city. As part of her research, Florence had learned that after the original mosque had been built there in the twelfth century, the whole thing had been demolished and rebuilt to correctly align with Mecca. Their hotel, Florence knew, wasn’t far from it.
The roads here were more chaotic than the modern highways outside the city walls, but the cars, donkeys, horse-drawn carriages, and mopeds darted around one another without incident. Florence peered out the window. The buildings had a delicate beauty entirely absent from those in Florida, or even New York. The geometric carvings and colorful tilework looked extraordinarily labor-intensive. Florence loved the romance of it, eschewing the practical for the magical. Palm trees marked the facades with swaying shadows.
After driving through the old city for ten minutes or so, Hamza stopped at a busy intersection and put the car into park.
“What are you doing?” Florence asked.
“We’re here,” he said.
Florence looked around. They had passed several picturesque side streets on the way in, but this was not one of them. Music blared from a restaurant on the corner. The store next to it sold tires and car batteries. A dozen or so men were draped over white plastic chairs on the side of the road; to call it a sidewalk would have been an overstatement.
“Charming,” said Helen flatly.
“No,” said Florence, shaking her head. “No.” She unfolded the printout of their hotel reservation and showed it to Hamza again. She had chosen it after hours of research. According to TripAdvisor it was a “tucked-away oasis oozing local charm.”
“Riad Belsa,” she said, stabbing the paper with her finger. “A tucked-away oasis oozing local charm.”